Against tax printers: “A strike for evasion”

SD. The Directorate General of Internal Taxes (DGII) has a goal of including 10,000 companies in its program of fiscal solutions, which at its beginning, some six years ago, was described as the “installation of fiscal printers.”

Of the total that the government has established as their goal in this program of fiscal solutions, only 13.5% have managed to obtain the required equipment within the deadline granted by the DGII, which was up last 31 December 2013.

This explains that from now on the tax collection agency will have to go out into the streets to require the 8,645 commercial establishments to get their fiscal solutions in order to comply with the goal set by the government. (This “fiscal solution” is no more than the annotation on the receipt issued by the business of the ITBIS on each item and the total, for tax inspection purposes).

Nevertheless, on the one hand, while the DGII prepares itself to achieve its goal of incorporating 10,000 tax payers into the fiscal solutions, the president of the Dominican Federation of Merchants (FDC), Ivan Garcia, ratified that this Thursday that his entity will be backing a protest organized by the commercial establishments in San Francisco de Macoris.

Garcia said that they are analyzing a request by several merchant associations from Salcedo and Nagua who also want to halt their labors tomorrow in order to demand that the government extend the deadline for obtaining the fiscal printers.

In the meantime, Guarocuya Felix, the head of the DGII, called these threats “foolish” and he issued a call for calmness among the tax payers that carry out some sort o commercial activity, because this institution does not have “either the logistic capacity or the political will” to close all of the businesses that do not have the fiscal solutions installed.

This program has already brought in 5,978 companies: 4,623 between 2009 and 2012, and 1,355 between September 2012 and 31 December 2013.

According to Tony Henriquez, the deputy director for Collections at the DGII, this project has two principle objectives: “The formalization of the companies” and the collection of “information” of fiscal value on these tax payers.

Nevertheless, he recognizes the “collateral effect” of the program, which consists in the increase in collections that will partially reduce a tax evasion in the payment of the Tax on the Transfer of Industrialized Goods and Services (ITBIS), which is estimated at 30%.

Perhaps because of this, the resentment by several associations such as the FDC, and the Union of Merchants and Businessmen of the Northeast (UCENOR), which has threatened with strikes for 9 and 14 January in case the DGII insists on the installation of the tax printers in these businesses.

When Henriquez was asked if these steps are for a strike to support (tax) evasion, the official answered: “Yes it is; it is for evasion.”

Not for everyone

On the program “El Sol de la Mañana” Guarocuya Feliz made it clear that the majority of merchants do not have the obligation to install the fiscal solutions, since this just applies to the businesses with income above RD$7.8 million a year or with purchases above RD$30 million, according to the Simplified Tax Procedures (PST).